I think we had a great start on CLT Tuesday. I have a question though. Is teaching 'communicative language skills' the same as teaching 'interactive language skills'? Which one is a bigger concept/term? Let me know what you think.
We kind of finished chapter 1. So please write your responses to the tasks (I think we either did not have enough time for task 3 last time or didn't have a classroom text with us in the room) on a piece of paper or post them as a comment here. You can also create your own blog and let others know and respond to it. Any of the options will be fine.
Next Tuesday when we'll have more time, we'll study chapter 2 together. Remember to bring the little red book with you!
4 comments:
I have never heard of "interactive language teaching". What is the basic concept behind that method?
Interactive Language Skills is using art, graphs, pictures, to build a relationship between the language learned with the learner. Basically anything thing that will make learning language more active or "interactive."
I believe CLT (Communitive Language Teaching) is the bigger concept and interative language skills breaks it down in order to achieve CLT. That's from what I gather from looking this stuff online.
As for Task 1 I wrote: 1, 3, 4, 6, & 9.
Task 2
1.GC 2. CC 3. CC 4.GC 5.both 6.CC 7.both
Task 3: Our textbook has a grammar section but CLT activities predominate.
Task 4: I don't think Chinese adult ESL learners are quite comfortable in a collaborative CLT environment. Culturally, it becomes difficult to get Chinese adult students to get out of their chairs and be "interactive or communicative". I am not saying we can't work towards becoming more communicative learners. Yet on the other hand, they like helping each other a lot (telling each other answers or what not...) -- so that's the collaborative side. :)
Task 1 - 1, 3, 6, 9
Task 2 - GC, CC, CC, GC, both, CC, both
Task 3 - There are grammar lessons, but the textbook moves from grammatical structure to integration of grammar in communicative activities.
Task 4 - Students may initially find collaborate learning to be intimidating because they may not want to have their language "failures" brought to light, either under their peers or their teacher. Individual learning and mere imitation of the instructor may be considered "safer" and less threatening; easier to "hide" mistakes. It may take a time of trial and error before the students begin to see the benefit of collaborative learning. For the instructors, a move to communicative language learning may mean that the instructor needs to sharpen their professional development and their theoretical knowledge of ESL instruction and the English language itself. Questions and needs will vary greatly in communicative language learning, and the instructor will need to be prepared to adequately answer any and all types of questions that may pop up. Even if the question cannot be immediately answered, at least the instructor would need to be WILLING to search out the answer and get back to the student.
Chapter 1 responses:
CLT or ILS, which is a bigger concept?
-based on what Peggy has mentioned about ILS, i would agree that CLT is a bigger concept, in that CLT seems to more broadly incorporate ILS dynamics. The use of different "interactive" teaching tools and models both strengthens communicative competence and helps prepare learners to communicate in different contextual situations.
Task 1:
#s 1, 3, 6, 9
Task 2:
1. CC
2. CC
3. GC
4. both
5. CC
6. both
7. GC
Task 3:
SF 1 leans more towards using activities that practice communicative competence v. grammatical competence. Many of the pair work & dialogs seem to be oriented more around the idea of communicative competence.
Task 4:
One difficulty may be initial student complaint in that they are moving out of their comfort zones (for lower levels-receiving bilingual instruction) into more conversation/activity/small group based classroom exercises. Teachers also face the challenge of spending additional time in materials prep and need to become more active classroom managers and facilitators.
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